ORVA News

Here is a little about what we’ve been up to in getting ORVA up and running:

I have been overwhelmed with the outpouring of support from so many accomplished and successful people. Hundreds of hours have been volunteered by many of your neighbors, peers and community leaders and I have struggled to collect all of the ideas and suggestions into a targeted team effort. I am proud to say we have evolved in to a highly functioning and cohesive organization in just a few short weeks, and our direction has become focused into a single powerful campaign we unanimously believe will ensure our success far beyond the expectations I set for myself just five months ago when I conceived of this Alliance!

Your Board of Directors have elected officers and they have appointed myself Executive Director, approved the membership structure formalized by the membership committee and the marketing campaign created by the marketing committee and empowered me to hire part time help for member services. The goal we have set for ourselves is to reach as many RV Owners we can this summer season and give them a number of compelling reasons to return again and again to our great state and region.

The first result of our collective efforts is the Come2oregon.com: RV Resource Guide. This 48 page one-of-a-kind, over sized, full color, pictorial and editorial packed guide, will provide an informative and invaluable keepsake for RV Owners coming to spend their leisure and recreation time here in Oregon. More than a dozen of our most interesting and successful communities are working together to bring this information into a single place which will be distributed directly into the hands of more than 30,000 RV Owners. The guide will have dozens of pages dedicated to the best recreation and leisure opportunities our region has to offer in Pictures, Editorial, and Directory form, with maps highlighting each member location and special features. All of the materials will be a provided by members of the Oregon RV Alliance who represent the various communities that make up our diverse cooperative such as the South Willamette Wineries Association, Oregon Covered Bridge Organizers, Travel Lane County, Junction City, Cottage Grove, Florence, Oregon Country Trails, and of course our world famous RV Industry!!!

The most important feature will of course be our targeted distribution. Starting with member RV Resorts and Parks, Dealerships, Manufacturers and Service Centers. Each member will be represented in the guide in several ways, and they will all be highly motivated to present them to each customer. Member parks will include them in their welcoming info for new arrivals. We will also distribute the guides at as many RV Rallies and Festivals as we can throughout the course of the summer. Starting with the 600 coach NW FMCA Rally in the first weekend of June where we will have a booth, seminars and program advertising. Our RV Resource Guide will be inserted into The Rally welcome packets for each of the RV owners as they arrive to check in. In July we will be distributing the guide in Redmond to the Good Sam Owners Rally where more than 2,500 RV Owners are expected!!! We will be represented at these shows by members from the tourism Industry in various regalia representing covered bridges, Scandinavian festivals and wineries for example.

The end result will be a bi-annual publication of a valuable, compelling resource for RV Owners to reference when coming to spend their leisure and recreation time here in Oregon. The next edition will be produced later this year for distribution into the southern regions of the West Coast in January of 2012. To ensure the perception of value as a resource guide rather than just an advertisement, we will limit the available advertising space to only 16-pages. In the interests of fairness advertising space will be allocated to only a few pages for each community represented in the guide. The space will sell out quickly and we will limit it to members only for this first guide. Each Charter Member will receive a 1/8 page display ad as a benefit of membership!

A waiting list will serve to manage the prospective advertisers who do not get included in this first edition. Either myself a member of the board of directors, or a representative of your community will contact each member in the next two weeks to reserve your space. Please feel free to call me directly if you would like to reserve a high visibility or large space soon. Most of the Board members have already spoken for their space, but only your deposit will actually hold that space.

The Come2oregon.com: RV Resource Guide will of course direct folks to our especially memorable web site, which is still under development, but will go live in the next few weeks.

Thanks for your confidence and your continued support, I am at your service, should you have any ideas or suggestions, I welcome all opinions and will work hard to include your input and ideas in all of our efforts. We are an all inclusive member driven public/private partnership whose continuing mission is to boldly go where no one has gone before…. a collaborative community wide effort to encourage RV Owners to spend their leisure and recreation time here in our great State of Oregon.